


Pressure

by ishafel



Category: Igby Goes Down (2002)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-13
Updated: 2011-02-13
Packaged: 2017-10-15 15:01:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/161998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ishafel/pseuds/ishafel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Oliver breaks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pressure

Oliver doesn't cry for his mother, not even when he's killing her. Oliver never cries. He's not even sure anymore if he's capable of it. He knows what it is grief gets you—a single room in Bellevue and pills sorted by color into little plastic cups. He's spent his whole life trying not to be his father.

Oliver's learned not to put much faith in the things his father loved: not to put much faith in God, or family, love or beauty or even light. It's better to be alone than to love someone the way his father loved his mother. And his father hated the winter, hated the city, hated the night, but Oliver spent four years at Columbia and it gets far colder in New York than it ever did in Washington.

Oliver's learned that these things his father had such faith in can be found anywhere, if you know what to look for. He's tried his best to forget the things his father taught him but in the dark he is his father's son as well as his mother's and snow and streetlights can still move him. On any given winter's night in any given city he can still feel the presence of his parents' gods; there is always a hint of blood and liquor on the wind and he knows he is not alone.

Oliver doesn't need to cry, because he has Igby to do it for him. He watched Igby fall apart when their mother died, and he thought, this is what love does to you. This is what family does to you. It was ugly, and he was glad it wasn't happening to him. He begins to worry he's turning into his mother.

One January in Baltimore the ships freeze in their berths in the harbor, ugly metal hulks that look strangely fragile, the way the bones of dinosaurs look; D.H. calls and Bunny calls, the clients call and his boss calls. Oliver hears the phone ring and ring but he can't bring himself to answer. He sits by the window in his apartment, and smokes a thousand cigarettes. Sometimes he forgets to light one, or forgets he's lit one. He's keeping vigil for something that should have been but wasn't. He's losing his job, his life, and his mind, all at once.

There will be no hospital bed, no white-walled room, and no elaborate funeral service. The people he knows hate failure as much as they fear death, and they cannibalize the fallen. They ask him what he's doing, and why, and they turn away when he can't tell them. Whatever's wrong with him, it can't be cured by chemotherapy or sunlight.

The ice is melting; the ships float free: only Oliver stays where he is. He smokes his father's stale, ancient cigarettes and he waits. D.H. is angry with him. All of them are angry with him. He'll never work again in this city, no matter what happens. He's gone to visit his father once a month for years, and he still goes, turning up the collar on his dark coat despite the warmth of the sun. Now it's the only place he goes, but he still feels the same distaste for it and for the people there. He's one of them now but he doesn't have to like them.

So, January, February, March, April. He's halfway through the stale cigarettes stored in the top of his closet and there's no epiphany in sight. They don't call much these days, and they don't come around at all, and Baltimore smells like rust and piss. He's thought of something he could tell them, now that it's too late. I did this to myself, he could say, and no one can undo it but me. He has no interest in the friends that failed his father or the doctors that failed his mother.

This is the point in the war when they call in the reserves. Oliver recognizes the thud of Igby's feet on the stairs, can already imagine how badly this will go. He lights another cigarette. He doesn't like Igby but he isn't sure it's fair to subject him to the shipwreck he's become. Igby knocks on the door like a secret agent transmitting code, and Oliver wonders if he should remember it, if it's a cipher from their childhood.

He props his burning cigarette against the window glass and gets up to open the door. Igby's leaning on it so hard, he falls into the room. Oliver turns away, thinking of his still-burning cigarette. After a while, Igby drags a chair over to the window and joins him. The streets below them are full of people, light, and noise.

Igby reaches for a cigarette and Oliver lets him. He's grown now, and he can make his own choices. But Igby takes a double handful of cigarettes and throws them out the open window. And another, and another. In the street people stop and stare up in amazement. Igby throws the cigarettes down on them, like some bizarre and cancerous rain-god. Oliver should be angry but he isn't. He's always hated to be mocked, hated to be different, but now he laughs for what feels like the first time in years.


End file.
